A massive raid involving close to 200 officials on the office premises of the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) through Friday and Saturday has led to the arrest of four touts and three officials for allegedly receiving large amounts of bribes.

The raids were conducted by the Karnataka Lok Ayukta on the basis of information provided by members of the public that BDA officials were using touts on the BDA premise to collect bribes for carrying out their official duties.

The Additional Director General of Police (Lokayukta) H S Satyanarayana Rao said that the police had registered a suo-moto case based on information from members of the public.

“We deployed our officials to verify the allegations and found that there was rampant corruption at the BDA office premises. Most of the officials were collecting bribes inside vehicles parked in the BDA office premises,” Rao said.

Among the officials arrested in the course of the raids are G T Harishilpa, an additional land acquisition officer was caught with Rs 1.69 lakh in unaccounted cash and M M Gangadhar, a surveyor with Rs 51,000.

Among the private individuals who were arrested one R Srinivas was held with Rs 1.33 lakh and another C Shankar was held with Rs three lakh in cash. The police also seized four vehicles that were found abandoned in the BDA premises.

More than 200 policemen from the Lokayukta police wing headed by Rao conducted the raid.

bbmp and bda employees think it is their birthright to ask for bribe. All employees in each office act in tandem and help each other to collect the bribe. How can we complain on any 1 given person to Lokayukta?